Overview

For more than forty years, the experimental filmmaker James Benning has been engaged in a systematic investigation of the relations between man, landscape, and the filmic medium, and during the last decade it has become increasingly clear how much these investigations have to offer to contemporary debates about ecology, the age of the anthropocene and the potentialities of new digital technologies. In James Benning's Environments a range of international scholars highlight the thematic and formal coherence of Benning's practice, whilst providing readers with an artistic and historical context to understand his experimental film work. The volume offers a number of interpretative frameworks drawing on film theory, environmental humanities, visual culture and philosophy, explaining why Benning has emerged as one of today's essential filmmakers.

Full Product Details

Author:   Nikolaj Lubecker ,  Daniele Rugo
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
Edition:   2nd Revised edition
ISBN:  

9781474417945

ISBN 10:   1474417949
Pages:   208
Publication Date:   30 November 2017
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Introduction, Nikolaj Lübecker & Daniele Rugo 　Intellectual EnvironmentsSurveying James Benning, Scott MacDonaldUtah and the Times: Governing Temporality in Deseret, John BeckViolence and Landscape in the Films of James Benning, Nikolaj Lübecker Material EnvironmentsConstructing the Transversal Time-Image: Ecosophy, Immanence and Corporate ‘Land’ in James Benning’s Four Corners and California Trilogy, Colin GardnerMen in Huts in Woods: Independence, Transcendentalism and Technology in James Benning’s Thoreau and Kaczynski Documentaries and Exhibition, Silke PanseThe Earth as Material Film: Benning’s light glance making a material-image, Felicity Colman Perceptual EnvironmentsA Lake-Event, Tom ConleyDefacing the Close-up, Kriss Ravetto-BiagioliThe Adventure of Patience, Daniele Rugo Index

Reviews

James Benning's film and video works are not just powerful and entrancing interventions in contemporary art. They are in most instances complex statements about the nature of the world, questions about how we know it, and challenges to the political responsibilities we have for both the world and our ways of knowing. Nikolaj L�becker & Daniele Rugo have curated some of the best contemporary art theorists, ecocritics, film philosophers and Benning specialists to create a startling and provocative account of a body of work of immense importance to how we interpret and act in the Anthropocene.--Professor Sean Cubitt, Goldsmiths, University of London

Author Information

Nikolaj Lubecker is Professor of French and Film Studies at St John s College, University of Oxford. Daniele Rugo is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Arts & Humanities at Brunel University London.

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